Abstract
Gravitational-wave emission from stellar collapse has been studied for nearly four decades. Current state-of-the-art numerical investigations of collapse include those that use progenitors with more realistic angular momentum profiles, properly treat microphysics issues, account for general relativity, and examine non-axisymmetric effects in three dimensions. Such simulations predict that gravitational waves from various phenomena associated with gravitational collapse could be detectable with ground-based and space-based interferometric observatories. This review covers the entire range of stellar collapse sources of gravitational waves: from the accretion-induced collapse of a white dwarf through the collapse down to neutron stars or black holes of massive stars to the collapse of supermassive stars.Electronic Supplementary MaterialSupplementary material is available for this article at 10.12942/lrr-2011-1.
Highlights
The field of gravitational-wave (GW) astronomy will soon become a reality
One important class of sources for these observatories is stellar gravitational collapse. This class covers an entire spectrum of stellar masses, from the accretioninduced collapse (AIC) of a white dwarf and the collapse of low-mass stars, including electroncapture supernovae (Mstar < 10 M⊙), through the collapse of massive stars (M > 10 M⊙) that produce and the even more massive stars (M > 20 M⊙) that produce the “collapsar” engine believed to power long-duration gamma-ray bursts [333], massive and very massive Population III stars (M = 20 – 500 M⊙), and supermassive stars (SMSs, M > 106 M⊙)
Massive stars might avoid the collapse to a black hole if strong magnetar-like fields can be produced in the dense environment produced when the above engine fails [35, 175, 2, 3, 6, 329]
Summary
The field of gravitational-wave (GW) astronomy will soon become a reality. The first generation of ground-based interferometric detectors (LIGO [177], VIRGO [324], GEO600 [122], TAMA300 [301]) are beginning their search for GWs. Gravitational waves can propagate from the innermost parts of the stellar core to detectors without attenuation by intervening matter With their weak interaction cross-sections, neutrinos can probe the same region probed by GWs. But whereas neutrinos are extremely sensitive to details in the microphysics (equation of state and cross-sections), GWs are most sensitive to physics driving the mass motions (e.g., rotation). Many of the strongest GW estimates in the literature tend to use rotation rates that are orders of magnitude higher than that predicted for most stars These more optimistic results often predict that the current set of detectors should observe GWs from astrophysical sources. Our summary is based on what we judge to be the more realistic signal predictions
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